Words by The Braves.
We’ve always had a big penchant for drawing inspiration from a lot more than music; great writers and books, cinema and video, movements and the people who made them… art is to inspire the artist, not to idolise.
With that said, when it comes to making a film clips for our music, we’d been offered live clips at extortionist prices and seen blanch ideas of reversed slo-mo ultra hi-def chicanery on offer and decided, it’s a part of the creative process and it’s inherent within this band and life that we do it our fucking selves.
Besides who wants some fucking rube who’s never seen John Waters or Lang or Argento! Making images of your own gear. Get a friend (or better an enemy) and a phone with a camera (maybe even an actual camera) point and shoot, got a computer? (yeah you do) Flog some exterior stock shots (invert the colour) annnnnd edit.
Here’s some formulas we’ve used to garner international success and praise amongst such peers as Wim Wenders & Betty Birkenstock.
Cool Russia
This would seemingly be our first clip though it came from the ruins of another that was lost to the ether.
A comment not so much on the annexing of Crimea which was happening at the time as the way it was presented to us, it’s made up of classic grainy live shots extracted from flip phones and relevant outbreaks of dissent around the world taken from Al Jazeera’s front pages.
Black Mass
Light projection, Haitian voodoo masks, hypno wheels, goat skulls, pitch black woods and a bolting deer shot in infrared.
Shot in the depths of a forest and the depths of a mad house that was subsequently torn down. We cleared the lounge of said mad house, blotted out the light, hit the torches and rolled the cameras. Also using car headlights is a goer.
All Through Paradise (teaser)
This was built as a way to introduce people to a bulk of our album. Its a simple formula of boosting Lynch, Harring, Dali, silent movies, and Japanese cinema.
Splice, dice and voila.
Beaches of Berlin
Borne of another idea, Beaches of Berlin began life in Greenwood loft where the generous owner let us make use of booths and booze to film lip synced parts.
It was then hand balled to another whose idea wasn’t fully realised to then culminate to the original footage being played backwards through a broken TV from a projector, cast onto backing paper in a room full of neon pink spray painted bottles while being set on fire in a tiny room with smoke machines throttling.
People
The first single off Carry on the Con, our upcoming album.
Features Gin Lane, a once debauched place that had all the same ruinations involved as the original. The idea was to cast as many faces to get reactionary moments, from sadness all through to gladness and highlighting emotion with the goal to draw out singular expression. Maybe in some juxtaposition to the theme within the song… maybe just because it’s interesting to watch people.
Side By Side
Abandoned houses, green paint, glad-wrapped roses to the nipples, more green paint, white suit and cane, add a dash of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and some foreign subtitles and you got a clip.
(edit. tinfoil grills make gums bleed)
